


with that slow southern style

by Addie_D_123



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean singing, M/M, Mommy Issues, Pining Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-26
Updated: 2015-06-26
Packaged: 2018-04-06 07:37:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4213437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Addie_D_123/pseuds/Addie_D_123
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam has been sitting silently, watching Dean clean his guns and sing softly to himself for the last five minutes. Sam knows he’s been gone awhile: four whole years out of the loop, but he still finds it strange that he can’t place the song, doesn’t recognize the lyrics coming out of Dean’s mouth. He sits frozen, hands hovering over the keyboard, transfixed, until he just can’t take it anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	with that slow southern style

 

 

 

 

Sam has been sitting silently, watching Dean clean his guns and sing softly to himself for the last five minutes. Sam knows he’s been gone awhile: four whole years out of the loop, but he still finds it strange that he can’t place the song, doesn’t recognize the lyrics coming out of Dean’s mouth. He sits frozen, hands hovering over the keyboard, transfixed, until he just can’t take it anymore.

“Dean?”

Dean pauses for a moment, goes quiet before looking up at him. “Dude, what? I was kinda in the zone over here.”

Sam snaps his laptop shut and leans forward, rests his elbow on the table, his chin in his hand. “What song is that?”

“What song is what?” Dean raises an eyebrow.

“The song you were just singing, like, a second ago.”

Dean looks to the ceiling and after a moment the side of his mouth quirks up. “Didn’t even realize I was doing it...but yeah. Uh, Black Velvet.”

Sam watches Dean go back to cleaning his gun. Swift, skillful hands swipe over steel until it shines in the dim lamplight, and Sam stares. Dean’s hands have always been important to him.

“That’s the name of the song?”

“Yeah, Sam, you never heard it?” Dean snaps the components the Taurus together with a satisfying click and places it carefully down on the bedspread. “No way, I’m sure you did.” He picks up the Desert Eagle next and as he takes it apart he starts to sing again, louder this time.

“ _Mississippi in the middle of a dry spell, Jimmy Rogers on the Victrola up high. Mama’s dancin’ with baby on her shoulder, the sun is settin’ like molasses in the sky. The boy could sing, knew how to move, everything. Always wanting more, he’d leave you longing for..._ ”

Dean trails off and looks up at Sam expectantly. When Sam just blinks back at him, Dean scoffs. “You really don’t know that song? Man, someone’s gotta educate you, Sammy-boy.”

Sam raises both eyebrows but doesn’t say anything. After a moment he makes a motion, an impatient flutter of his hand signaling Dean to _go on then_.

Dean leans back and swings his legs up and over the guns in varying states of disassembly and drapes them off the side of the bed, faces his brother. Sam feels one of Dean’s stories coming on. He settles in.

“This was a few years back, can’t remember the exact year but that doesn’t really matter. It was when you were-” Dean pauses, “at school.”

He never says the word Stanford, like he can’t bring himself to. The wound is still too fresh.

“Dad and me were workin’ what we thought was a simple salt ‘n burn, turned out to be a poltergeist. Motherfucker threw me down two flights of stairs, count ‘em, two.” He holds up his fingers just in case Sam is dim, the middle slightly crooked from a past bad break. “Dislocated my shoulder, tore up my back all to hell.”

Dean hunches his shoulders like he can still feel the pain, and Sam flinches in sympathy. He could have had his back, but he wasn't there. Dean will never say it, but Sam knows he’s thinking it.

Dean shakes his head slightly like shaking away the memory and continues.

“Anyway, I was out of commision, and Dad knew it. So when he left for the next job, he benched me. We were in this little town outside Bowling Green, and Dad had a job in Louisville, or somewhere. He rented a room at the May Fair Motel for a week and told me to stay put.”

Dean leans back on his hands a little; they’re gonna be here for awhile. Sam can just make out the slight swell of Dean’s stomach when he breathes in, the way the t-shirt stretches taut across his shoulders, and it makes Sam’s throat itch. He quickly crosses the room to the mini fridge to grab a couple beers and hands one over before opening his own. Dean pops the cap with his ring like he’s _just so cool_ and takes a swig before he speaks again.

“Here I am, thinking this is gonna _suck_. Nothing to do around here but watch tv or drink at the rinky dink bar attached to the liquor store in town. So, can you guess what I did?”

Sam rolls his eyes at him, so hard it hurts. But Dean just chuckles and continues.

“Man, that bar was my kinda place. Sticky bar tops, dollar drafts, and loose women.” He waggles his brows for effect, just to hear Sam groan. “And every night of the week was karaoke night, no joke, every night. The lady that ran it was real no nonsense about it, too. No YMCA or Garth Brooks allowed.”

He looks down at his lap and smiles again, the slow spread of it across his face, soft and genuine. He drains half of his beer. His ring clinks against the side of the bottle.

“I wish you could have met her. Name was Alex. Alexandra. And she was real tall, had this wild long red hair and wore these long swooshy black skirts and all this jewelry with stones and symbols and shit like, like a witch or somethin’.”

“Like Stevie Nicks?”

“Yeah, witchy, like I said.”

Sam leans forward, childlike, and catches himself getting sucked in by his brother. Every, damn, time.

“Yeah, so she ran the karaoke night, and she ran the bar. Hard working woman, but like, really uh...sweet?”

Dean looks lost for a moment, eyes focused on the floor. Vulnerable.

“She kinda looked out for me. She used to do this thing where when I tried to hand over what I owed her, she would just squeeze my hand in hers, just for a second, and then walk away. Half the time she didn’t even take the cash.”

Dean looks at his hands, flexes his fingers, a memory relex.

Sam puts his beer down on the floor, leans back and crosses his arms over his chest. “So what, you had a crush on her?”

“Dude, no, it wasn't like that. Anyway, she was like, forty.”

Sam puts his hands up in surrender, sighs heavily as he shoots his eyes to the side.  “Yeah, Dean, that’s, like, _ancient_.”

Dean continues, undeterred. “No, I just mean, I was twenty-three, but she treated me like a kid. Was always checking to make sure I ate. Gave me free grilled cheese all the time, even if I just finished a whole meal. She would just bring them along with my beer, with a hard look and a little head nod. Like, _eat_.”  Dean drains the rest of his beer and grins at Sam, batting his eyes. “She said I was a growing boy, Sam.”

Sam watches Dean trot over to grab another beer, bouncing on his feet like he’s lighter from the memory.

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Sam retorts when Dean drops back down on the mattress, sending his favorite Taurus tumbling to the floor. He curses and reaches for it, stretches. Exposes a thin strip of his pale, freckled back. Sam quickly grabs his beer from the floor and chugs the warmish remains to chase the lump in his throat.

“You still haven’t gotten to what this has to do with the song,” Sam sputters around the mouth of the bottle. He squeezes it so hard the blood leaves the pads of his fingers.

“Patience, young grasshopper, I’m gettin’ to it. Uh, right. So every night at the end of the thing, Alex would sing the last song. And every night it was the same song. Can you guess that tune, Sammy?”

Sam forces a sigh through his clenched teeth. Plays his part.

“She really had some pipes on her, too. Belted that shit out and brought the house down. No one would talk, or, or even move around while she was at it. It meant it was the end of the night, bar’s closing, you don't haveta go home...you know the drill. But she just...had this really great sound to her, and it got stuck in my head. I went there every night for six days ‘til Dad showed up the seventh, a day early.”

Dean cracks open his new beer and chases the foam that runs down the neck of the bottle with his tongue. Sam digs his nails into his thigh.

“You know Dad. Just scooped me up from the room, so I never made it to the bar that last night. Wasn’t expecting him ‘til the next day. Never got to say goodbye.”

Sam knows he’s supposed to say something sarcastic here. Supposed to crack a joke or make fun of Dean’s crush on the cougar or something like that. But he can’t, because that’s not the moral of the story. That’s not what Alex was all about, what she meant. So he just waits.

Like clouds passing across the sun, there's a flicker of dark before the light, and after a heavy sigh, Dean smiles again.  

Sam breaks the silence.

“What song did you sing?”

Dean ducks his head, cheeks pink, embarrassed. “I didn’t, Sam. You know I can’t sing for shit.”

“That’s never stopped you before.”

Sam easily dodges the bottle cap thrown at his head.

“You love my singing. I’m a delight.”

It’s true, Sam does. But before he can blow his cover and spill his guts, Dean goes on.

“I dunno, Sam, this was different. After hearing her, I couldn’t imagine getting up there. She was the star of the show. Didn’t need me stinking up the joint. Besides, it’s hard to sing when your mouth is full.” He pauses, realizes the accidental implication, and smirks.

“You’re disgusting, Dean.”

“Yeah, I know. You love it.”

Dean reaches down and places his empty on the floor next to the bed, then takes up with the guns again, story over. Moment passed. He works in silence, the slide and click of their weapons and distant highway traffic the only sounds.

“You know, Sam, you can turn on the tv or somethin’. Probably one of those science nerd shows you like on PBS, oh oh, or even better, pay-per-porn?”

Sam opens his laptop and quickly looks down at the screen. Anything to dodge that smile Dean is shining at him. But it’s of no use, because he can picture it in his mind. That look that wriggles around in his guts and roots out all his mixed up wants and needs.

Sam looks up. He’s so fucked.

“Hilarious. But no, sorry, someone has to find us a case already. And I don’t see you checking around, so...”

“So bossy.” Dean moves onto the the sawed off, stripping it apart, arranging the elements in front of him. He perks up suddenly.

“Hey! My night to choose dinner. Pizza?”

Sam mumbles something in the affirmative, types and clicks around and waits. A minute or so passes before it starts again. Soft and sweet, pretty words carefully formed by a prettier mouth. And when Dean gets to the chorus the second time around, Sam thinks he knows the words.

“ _Black velvet and that little boy's smile, black velvet with that slow southern style. A new religion that'll bring ya to your knees. Black velvet, if you please._ ”

The words sound so familiar, so true. The song already a memory in Sam’s head, like it had been there the whole time.

 

**Author's Note:**

> For my darling [silver9mm](http://archiveofourown.org/users/silver9mm/pseuds/silver9mm)  
> and her Black Velvet feels. *muah*


End file.
